Things Are Afoot

Eltham Palace in the Royal Borough of Greenwich (South East London) is a mash up of medieval and Tudor palace and a state of the art 1930s millionaire’s mansion.

The palace began as a moated manor in the 11th century, becoming a Royal Palace in the early 1300s when it was gifted to the future Edward II. By the early 14th century it had become one of the most frequented royal residencies in the country and home to successive monarchs. In the 1470s during the reign of Edward IV, a great hall was built, which has survived to this day.

Henry VIII spent a great deal of his childhood at Eltham and it was at the palace in 1515 that Cardinal Wolsey took his oath of office to become the Lord Chancellor.

By the 17th century Eltham had fallen out of favour as a royal palace and after the Civil War was left to ruin, being used as a farm; the buildings tenanted.

Various attempts were made to repair the buildings and the great hall over the next two centuries, but it wasn’t until 1933 that Eltham really took on a new lease of life when millionaires Stephen and Virginia Courtauld leased the site from the Crown and set about building a new home for themselves.

Although they only occupied the new Eltham Palace for about 8 years, handing over the lease to the Army Educational Corps, it is the period during which the Courtaulds entertained their high profile friends (including royalty) which has been restored to be enjoyed by the public.

The house is a mix of Bond villain lair and backdrop for a Hercule Poirot murder mystery and was kitted out with cutting edge 1930s technology including electric fires, surround sound (for playing records in different rooms), private internal telephone exchange, centralised vacuum cleaner and underfloor heating.

The house adjoins the medieval great hall and sits within 19 acres of gardens and is run by English Heritage.

The masticated artworks by street artist Ben Wilson, who paints pictures on to bits of chewing gum that people have spat on the floor, are firm favourites amongst people who come on my walks. I would perhaps venture as far as to say, they are often, the highlight. I posted last year in May, mentioning that Wilson had been busy painting gum in Shoreditch (east London), and for a short while, my walks in the area were significantly improved. After only a few weeks though, someone came and stole them all.

I've noticed recently some really lovely, detailed chewing gum paintings that Wilson has completed, so have included a few here. Most are approximately the size of a 10 pence piece, a few, more like a fifty pence piece.

This one is a night scene on Rivington Street (Shoreditch) where the gum is situated.

I happened to be cycling along Kingsland Road one day and spotted Ben Wilson lying on the pavement painting. The next time I passed, I stopped to see what he had created. It was the above painting showing the view from where he was lying.

A handful of lovely landscapes have appeared on the walkway on the south end of the Millennium Bridge (Wilson's favourite spot) depicting St Paul's cathedral, the bridge and pedestrians.

If you're looking for a day trip out of London, why not visit Hever Castle in Kent? Its rich and varied history spans over 700 years, but is probably most famous for being the childhood home of King Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn.

Originally built in the 13th century as a defensive castle, Hever was home to the Boleyn’s throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, was later passed on to another of Henry VIII’s wives, Anne of Cleves and from the mid 16th century onwards was home to numerous families.

By the early 20th century, Hever Castle had fallen in to disrepair, but was given a new lease of life by the American born businessman, politician and newspaper publisher, William Waldorf Astor, who invested millions in restoring Hever Castle and constructed the impressive lake and gardens, which can still be visited today.

Visitors hoping to experience Hever Castle as Anne Boleyn would have known it will be disappointed, as much of its interior was restored in 1905. Never-the-less, the building oozes history and many rooms and corridors which you can wander through maintain original features or aspects the Boleyn family would have known, including Anne’s own bedroom. Henry VIII’s bed chamber for instance still boasts 16th century panelling and a mid 15th century ceiling and the gatehouse still contains a 13th century toilet, which emptied directly in to the moat.

The building is festooned with intriguing artefacts and paintings, particularly the Long Gallery which extends across the entire width of the castle, displaying an exhibition of 18 original portraits hung in dynastic order of the Tudors.

Once you’ve finished touring the castle, you can, as we did, while away an afternoon exploring the 125 acres of gardens (which when we visited was resplendent in autumnal colours), take a boat on the 38-acre lake, get lost in the maze or promenade through the Italian garden. We were lucky enough to fit in a spot of archery, before it closed until February.

Hever Castle is located 30 miles from central London. For those without a car, trains run from London Victoria or London Bridge stations to Edenbridge Town station. After that it’s a 3-mile taxi ride to the castle. If you’re happy to undertake a 1-mile country stroll, then head to Hever Station (unmanned and no taxis) – a map of the walk is available on the Hever Castle website.

Please Note - In the photos below you'll notice a lot of cobwebs in the rooms. It was a spooky Halloween feature, rather than a lack of cleaning on behalf the people at Hever Castle.

We've had a balmy summer, but now as we move in to September, I thought I'd write briefly about some of the private walking tours in London I've done over the last few months.

Above left is Hillary and friends on a walk which took us from St Paul's cathedral, through the Inns of Court around Fleet Street and Strand (where they are pictured). Top right is Thorsten and friends on a walk around east London, which aside from bits of history, includes a plethora of street art. Bottom left is Sylvia & Paris in the bombed out church of St Dunstan-in-the-east towards the end of a walk which included the areas of Bankside & Borough to the south of the river Thames. Bottom right is Annette and her family outside Buckingham Palace during a tour around the sights of Westminster.

Top left is Jamie and his lady friend in St James's Park. Top right is Alison and family in a rather dry looking Green Park, whilst giving them a bit of an introduction to London. Bottom left is Stacey & Andrew outside Buckingham Palace, which incidentally will be open to visitors until the end of this month. Bottom right is Terry & Jim by the Thames with the skyline of the City of London behind them.

Top left we have Kirsten and her family in the area of St James's, where I left them at the end of our walk. Top right are colleagues from CAFOD on a day out, exploring London. We began in the morning with a walk about the Great Fire of London, 1666, then in the afternoon dropped them off in Covent Garden after covering Fleet Street. Here they are in Wardrobe Place in the City of London. Bottom left is Bethany and family from the States in Trafalgar Square. Bottom right is Christie and Dan with the dome of St Paul's cathedral behind them.

Top left is Andy and his colleagues exploring the area of Soho one evening. Top right is Nancy & co from Canada standing beside Canada Gate next to Buckingham Palace. Bottom left is Drita and co with the iconic Tower Bridge behind them. Finally, we have Sara and family by Westminster Abbey.

​If you are coming to London and fancy doing a private tour that is hopefully fun and informative, then please get in touch.

I've mentioned chewing gum artist Ben Wilson on a number of occasions over the last few years. For the uninitiated, Mr. Wilson paints tiny pictures on pieces of chewing gum that people have spat on the floor. He's been making masticated art on London's streets for over a decade, but if you walk over the Millennium Bridge, and look down, you'll be sure to see his handy-work adorning what Londoner's call 'the wobbly bridge'.

On today's east London walk, which has been previously described as a street art walk with a few other bits about London thrown in, we soon discovered that in the last week or so, Ben Wilson, (the chewing gum man) has been on what Gary (one of the walkers) described as a 'chewing gum painting bender'. I'm sure there are more recent additions, but these are the ones that we spotted today around Old street, Shoreditch and Rivington Street.

Five years ago I wrote about the rather testosterone heavy collection of statues in Parliament Square which includes such luminaries as Winston Churchill, David Lloyd-George and Nelson Mandela. Since then, there has been the addition of Mahatma Gandhi in 2015, and a couple of weeks ago was the unveiling of the square’s latest bronze resident, which I wanted to mention.

This year (2018) marks the 100th anniversary of ‘The Representation of the People Act 1918’ which was passed by the then coalition government to reform the electoral system in Great Britain and Ireland. Prior to 1918, only adult men who owned property had been eligible to vote. These new laws gave universal suffrage to all men in the UK over the age of 21, and crucially, for the first time, women …albeit with a number of caveats. The right to vote was only granted to women over the age of 30 who were registered property owners with a value over £5, or married to someone who was. About 8.4 million women who had previously had no political voice, now had the right to vote. It would be another 10 years before women had equal suffrage to men, but none-the-less, the Act of 1918 was a huge step forward in the march for women’s rights and was the result of decades of campaigning.

Some of the women instrumental in pushing the cause, such as Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Sylvia and Christabel used high profile direct action to grab attention and highlight inequality. Emily Davison, died in 1913 from injuries sustained after she threw herself beneath King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby and Mary Richardson slashed a painting at the National Gallery. Many women were imprisoned or went on hunger strikes for their cause.

One woman, who was a leading figure in the women’s suffrage movement, shunning militant and provocative tactics for moderation and debate was Millicent Fawcett, and she was honoured recently with a statue in Parliament Square. Not only is it the first statue of a woman to be placed on this prominent site outside the Houses of Parliament, but the first to be made by a woman; Turner Prize winning artist Gillian Wearing.

Fawcett spent a staggering six decades of her life fighting for equal rights, and is depicted carrying a banner which reads “Courage calls to courage everywhere”, a line from a speech she gave following the death of Emily Davison. The plinth on which the 8ft 4inch statue of Fawcett stands, bears the faces of 59 others who also fought tirelessly for women’s right to vote.

It seems almost fitting that Millicent Fawcett died in 1929 at the age of 82, a year after women were granted the vote on equal terms to men; the cause she had spent her entire adult life fighting for.

​Last week, the latest artwork to be installed on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth was unveiled. It is called ‘The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist’ by Michael Rakowitz and is made from 10,500 empty Iraqi date syrup cans. The sculpture recreates ‘Lamassu’; a winged deity which stood guarding a gate near modern day Mosul from c700BC until 2015 when it was destroyed by Isis. It is just one of 7,000 such objects either destroyed or stolen from Iraqi museums or archaeological sites since 2003. For over a decade, Rakowitz has been attempting to recreate these objects as part of an ongoing project.

London has a plethora of statues of what I tend to just call ‘Dead White Men’ and when Trafalgar Square was originally developed in the first years of the 1840s, four such statues were planned. Charles Napier, Henry Havelock and King George IV can still be seen today, but the final statue of King William IV was never installed due to insufficient funds. Designed by Sir Charles Barry (Houses of Parliament), they got as far as constructing the plinth before calling it quits. I imagine it was always anticipated that the requisite money would be found, but 150 years later and London was still no nearer to getting its statue on what had become known as the ‘fourth plinth’.

In the mid 1990s, Prue Leith, then Chair of the Royal Society of Arts suggested something should be done about Trafalgar Square’s lonely plinth, and five years later, artist Mark Wallinger’s sculpture ‘Ecce Homo’ became the first artwork to find a temporary home there, gazing down on the tourists and pigeons.

Since 2005, the fourth plinth has become an official commission, a stage for rolling artworks which Londoners get to vote for. In recent years, many of the artworks have sought to reflect their immediate environment or the history of the square. Hans Haacke’s ‘Gift Horse’ (2015) brought together the National Gallery through English painter George Stubbs, alluding to the equestrian statue that should have adorned the plinth originally, whilst quite literally being tied to the London Stock Exchange through a ticker tape ribbon. Elmgreen & Dragset’s ‘Powerless Structures, Fig.101’ depicting a boy on a rocking horse turning away from the other statues; quite possibly suggesting we should look towards the future rather than constantly back at the past (which we do) began its shift in 2010. Yinka Shonibare’s ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ (2010) was obviously a direct nod towards Horatio Nelson who stands high over Trafalgar Square. The sails of Shonibare’s replica ship, the HMS Victory were made from patterned textiles typical of African dress, hinting towards the legacy of British colonialism and the expansion of the British Empire made possible by Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.

There’s been a couple of slightly more irreverent sculptures such as last years ‘Really Good’ by David Shrigley which I was a fan of, but I like the fact that Rakowitz’s current offering is casting the net wider and tackling the wholesale loss and destruction of historical and cultural artefacts on a vast scale; a catastrophe made possible after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, in which our own government was complicit. At a time when people seem to be looking inwards and isolationism and nationalism are rampant, I’m pleased that Michael Rakowitz has been given a prominent stage for the next couple of years to hopefully encourage us to look up, widen our horizons and give people the opportunity to reflect on just one small repercussion of what is termed the ‘fog of war’.

I look forward to discussing it with people in the future and see what visitors to London make of Trafalgar Square’s latest adornment.

Set inside the original canal side warehouses that housed it, The Ragged School Museum in East London is a tranche of Victorian life, offering an insight in to what the school day offered for the poor children of the east end.

The Ragged school, and others like it were the work of a man whose name will be familiar to most of us; Thomas Barnardo.

Barnardo arrived in London from his native Dublin in 1866 to train as a doctor, with the aim of travelling to China as a missionary. Rather like Thomas Coram and his Foundling Hospital just over a hundred years earlier, Barnardo was appalled with the poverty, disease and overcrowding endured by many in east end slums, not to mention the non existent educational opportunities for children.

Before he’d finished his training, Barnardo realised that instead of travelling overseas, the plight of those much closer to home deserved his attention and set about setting up his first ‘Ragged School’ in 1867. The term ‘ragged’ referred to the appearance of the children that attended.

In 1877, Barnardo opened the Copperfield Road Free School (where the museum resides today), providing just under 400 children a day with free schooling and food, and 2,500 children for Sunday school each week.

The building was saved from demolition in the 1980s and turned in to a museum complete with Victorian classroom, a domestic kitchen and exhibition space giving a wider context to east London life throughout the ages.

Some 16,000 school children still pass through the Ragged School’s doors each year to learn what life was like for their Victorian counterparts 140 years ago.

The Ragged School Museum is open every Wednesday and Thursday between 10am - 5pm and between 2pm – 5pm on the first Sunday of each month. It is free to visit, but donations are obviously welcome.

German born composer, George Frideric Handel (1685 – 1759) and American guitarist and all round rock legend, Jimi Hendrix (1942 – 1970) were next door neighbours in London …albeit 200 years apart.

The two musical greats lived at 23 and 25 Brook Street respectively; two Georgian Mayfair houses, which when Handel moved in to No. 25 in 1723 at the age of 38, was brand spanking new. Hendrix and girlfriend Kathy Etchingham occupied a bedroom and had the use of a kitchen at No. 23 Brook Street, between July 1968 and March 1969.

Hendrix’s bedroom has recently been restored from photo shoots that took place in the room and input from Etchingham herself. It can now be visited as a companion piece to Handel’s house next door, where the composer lived and worked.

Handel House

I decided to visit Handel’s house first, a typical 5 floor Georgian town house. There weren’t many visitors so was able to bend the ear of the incredibly helpful attendant who enthusiastically showed me how Handel’s staircase was widened to allow for his harpsichord to be carried up and down. Hendrix’s staircase however remained unaltered.

I began in Handel’s composition room. He was a pretty speedy composer, and could knock off an entire opera in 40 days, then start another straight afterwards, His Oratorio, ‘Messiah’ was written in just 24 days.

I then headed to the exhibition space (next door) which puts Handel’s life in to a bit of context and explains a bit about the London that Handel would have known and the places he regularly visited. Incidentally, he was very much involved with Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital, another small London museum, well worth a visit. The house on Brook Street was of course close to the theatres around Covent Garden, the developing area of Soho and the Royal family at St James’s Palace. Just like today, Handel had a plethora of coffee houses on his doorstep …and gin palaces.

It is thought that Handel died in his bedroom. The attendant there explained that the bed was short, not because Handel was particularly diminutive, but because people apparently slept sitting up, as it was believed to aid digestion.

Hendrix Flat

I was a massive Hendrix fan when I was a kid and it was obvious from visiting the museum that there are far more fervent Hendrix fans than myself.

The bedroom itself is just that, a room. It is festooned with paraphernalia from the swinging sixties, and the only original item from when Hendrix and Etchingham lived there, is an oval mirror. Still, it’s a faithful recreation and really captures the feel of how it would have been, even if not …the smell.

The room next door is a small museum which as you’d expect charts Hendrix’s journey from a U.S Army paratrooper to session musician for Little Richard (amongst others), a move to London, the formation of the Jimi Hendrix Experience to become what the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame describe as “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music” …all within a decade.

Hendrix died in September 1970 (not at this flat) at the age of 27.

Handel and Hendrix in London is a must for music lovers and especially for Jimi Hendrix aficionados visiting London. I couldn’t help but wonder what Jimi would have thought about a flat he rented for a short period in London becoming a shrine to himself, but I think it’s great that both these two very different musicians have not only been able to bridge the gap between their two very different genres, but also the centuries. London, for me, is a city where 2000 years of history constantly rub shoulders, which Handel & Hendrix in London opitimises.

It is fitting also that upon learning that Handel had lived next door, Hendrix went with Kathy Etchingham to the One Stop Record Shop on South Moulton Street and bought Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and ‘Water Music’ on vinyl.

As we move in to 2018 and I look forward to seeing who I might meet on walking tours around London this year, I thought I'd just mention a few walks I did and people I met (along with a few familiar faces) towards the end of last year.

Top left is Steve, one of his mates and their 'better halves'. I've done a few walks with Steve and his chums over the years, which has usually involved a number of pub stops. This particular walk was a little more sedate, around the area of Whitehall where they were staying. Top right is Debbie and Ken, visiting from Canada. They are standing beside the Canada Memorial in Green Park, made by Quebec artist Pierre Granche. It commemorates the one million Canadian soldiers who fought alongside the British in both World Wars. The narrow walkway, which divides the memorial points towards the port of Halifax in Nova Scotia, where many of those Canadians began their journey to Europe. The sloping face of the memorial, which trickles with water is embedded with bronze maple leaves. Bottom left is Meredith and Robert outside Liverpool Street station where I dropped them off after a walk around the areas of Spitalfields, Brick Lane and Shoreditch in east London. Bottom right is another group checking out the street art and fascinating history of the same area.

I did a couple of walks with Luke & Lydia (top left). On this photo they area standing by The Monument, built in the 1670s to commemorate the Great Fire of London, 1666. Top right is Jeff & co. standing in St James's Park during our walk around Westminster. Bottom left is Allison and family standing in front of a work by street artist Shok-1. Bottom right is Stephen & Cath standing in the delightful Old Street Underground Station where I dropped them off after our east London wander.

Top left is Ashleigh and her parents in the courtyard of Somerset House on Strand, which over the Christmas period is transformed in to an ice skating rink. Top right is Timothy & Jaime outside Buckingham Palace during our tour of Westminster sights. Bottom left is Olly and family, plus Jim from Texas with the iconic dome of St Paul's cathedral behind them. They requested a 'Fire of London' tour so we began at Pudding Lane where the fire broke out and roughly followed its path of destruction, finishing at St Paul's cathedral. Bottom right is Debi and a whole bunch of students from Buffalo and Singapore on Columbia Road for the Sunday flower market. I think it was the fourth year in a row I've done a walk with Debi and her students.

​If you're visiting London in 2018 and would like to do a private walking tour with me, please get in touch. I'd be happy to show you around.